1928
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50 free 1928 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The year 1928 sits at the high point of the Roaring Twenties, months before the crash that ended them. A mould on a forgotten culture plate was about to change medicine, cartoons learned to make noise, and pilots kept setting out over oceans nobody had flown before. Voters went to the polls on both sides of the Atlantic, and athletes gathered in Amsterdam and St. Moritz. This quiz covers the whole year: the inventions and snacks that first reached the shops, the films, books, music and radio shows people talked about, the science that later won Nobel Prizes, the disasters and treaties in the headlines, and the champions of the summer and winter Games. A run of questions is given over to the artists, performers and public figures who were born in 1928. It suits anyone born in 1928, anyone with a parent or grandparent who was, and anyone planning a milestone birthday, a reunion or a 1920s-themed quiz night. Think of it as a trivia book for 1928 that keeps score for you. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the questions work as well read aloud to a room as they do played on a screen.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which drug did Alexander Fleming discover in September 1928 after a holiday left a culture plate moldy?
Penicillin
Penicillin went by the nickname "mould juice" in Fleming's laboratory for months before he gave it its lasting name in March 1929.
Q 02Which cartoon character starred in Steamboat Willie, which premiered at a New York theater in November 1928?
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse had already appeared in a test screening of Plane Crazy that May, but it failed to impress and Disney could not find a distributor.
Q 03Which everyday food first went on sale in Chillicothe, Missouri, in July 1928, thanks to Otto Rohwedder's new machine?
Sliced bread
Sliced bread was briefly banned in the United States in 1943 as a wartime conservation measure.
Q 04Which candy did Fleer accountant Walter Diemer invent in 1928, coloring it pink with the only dye on hand?
Bubble gum
Bubble gum from Diemer's recipe went on sale as Dubble Bubble, and its sales passed 1.5 million dollars in the first year.
Q 05Which American became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air in June 1928, flying as a passenger?
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart said afterwards that she had been just baggage on the flight, and in 1932 she crossed the same ocean again, this time alone at the controls.
Q 06Which child star, born in Santa Monica in April 1928, later served as US ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia?
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple also served as Chief of Protocol of the United States, the official who looks after visiting foreign leaders.
Q 07Which Maurice Ravel work, commissioned by dancer Ida Rubinstein, was first performed in Paris in November 1928?
Boléro
Boléro was a sensational success at its premiere, though Rubinstein had first asked Ravel only to orchestrate piano pieces by Isaac Albéniz.
Q 08Which Republican won the 1928 US presidential election in a landslide over New York governor Al Smith?
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover beat the first Roman Catholic nominated by a major party, and even won several states of the long-Democratic Solid South.
Q 09Which screen hero did Johnny Weissmuller, swimming champion at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, later play twelve times?
Tarzan
Tarzan kept Weissmuller in work from 1932 to 1948, with six films for MGM and six more for RKO.
Q 10Which toy did Filipino immigrant Pedro Flores begin manufacturing in Santa Barbara, California, in 1928?
Yo-yo
The yo-yo sold so fast that by late 1929 Flores ran three factories with 600 workers, and an entrepreneur named Duncan soon bought the company.
Q 11Which treaty, signed in Paris in August 1928, had nations renounce war as an instrument of national policy?
Kellogg–Briand Pact
The Kellogg–Briand Pact was concluded outside the League of Nations and remains in effect, and its ban on war was later built into the United Nations Charter.
Q 12Which country swapped Arabic script for a new Latin-based alphabet in 1928?
Turkey
Turkey went on to ban the letters Q, W and X from official documents and street signs until 2013, because the new alphabet had no use for them.
Q 13Which country led the parade of nations for the first time at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, starting a lasting tradition?
Greece
Q 21Which English novelist died in January 1928, his ashes going to Westminster Abbey and his heart to a Dorset churchyard?
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy had wanted to lie beside his first wife, Emma, at Stinsford, so a compromise divided his remains between her grave and Poets' Corner.
Q 22Which medical machine, later a lifeline for polio patients, was first used on a child in Boston in October 1928?
Iron lung
The iron lung, developed at Harvard by Philip Drinker and a colleague, was first tried on an eight-year-old girl who was close to death from respiratory failure.
Q 23Which British express began running non-stop between London and Edinburgh in May 1928, a record for a scheduled train?
Flying Scotsman
Greece went first as the birthplace of the Games while the host nation marched last, an order that opening ceremonies have kept ever since.
Q 14Which Norwegian polar explorer vanished in June 1928 while flying to rescue the crew of the airship Italia?
Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen had crossed the Arctic two years earlier in an airship designed by Umberto Nobile, the very man whose missing crew he died trying to find.
Q 15Which British suffragette leader died in June 1928, weeks before women won the vote on equal terms with men?
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst died on 14 June, and the Equal Franchise Act that gave the vote to all women over 21 became law less than three weeks later.
Q 16Which pop artist, born to Rusyn immigrant parents in Pittsburgh in August 1928, began as a commercial artist?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol is remembered in his home city by the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist.
Q 17Which poet, born in Missouri in April 1928, recited her own work at Bill Clinton's first inauguration?
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou was the first poet to recite at a presidential inauguration since Robert Frost did so for John F. Kennedy in 1961.
Q 18Which revolutionary, born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1928, qualified as a doctor before joining Fidel Castro's rebels?
Che Guevara
Che Guevara toured South America as a medical student, and the poverty, hunger and disease he saw there set him on the road to revolution.
Q 19Which figure skater won the first of three straight Olympic titles at St. Moritz in 1928, aged just fifteen?
Sonja Henie
Sonja Henie had finished eighth in a field of eight at the 1924 Games aged eleven, and she went on to win ten world titles in a row.
Q 20In which former capital city was Japan's Emperor Hirohito formally enthroned at the Imperial Palace in November 1928?
Kyoto
Kyoto was the traditional home of the ancient rite, and Hirohito's father had been enthroned at the same palace in 1915.
The Flying Scotsman covered the 392 miles without a halt thanks to a corridor through the tender, which let a fresh crew take over halfway.
Q 24Which airship, finished at Friedrichshafen in 1928, later ran the first commercial transatlantic passenger service?
Graf Zeppelin
Graf Zeppelin flew on hydrogen for nine years and spent five of them carrying passengers and mail between Germany and Brazil.
Q 25What name did Charles Kingsford Smith give the Fokker he flew on the first flight across the Pacific in 1928?
Southern Cross
Southern Cross was bought from the polar explorer Hubert Wilkins and reached Brisbane from California in three legs, by way of Hawaii and Fiji.
Q 26Which Winnie-the-Pooh character first appeared in A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner, published in 1928?
Tigger
Tigger turns up in the second chapter, making a strange noise outside Pooh's house at night and then staying for breakfast.
Q 27Which reference work, begun in 1857 and aided by an asylum inmate, finally appeared in ten bound volumes in 1928?
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary had help from William Minor, a Yale-trained surgeon confined to Broadmoor after killing a man in London.
Q 28Which author had Lady Chatterley's Lover printed privately in Florence in 1928, decades before Britain allowed its sale?
D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence was long dead when Penguin Books won the 1960 obscenity trial, after which the novel quickly sold three million copies.
Q 29Which author published Orlando in October 1928, a novel whose hero lives for centuries and changes sex?
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf drew on the family history of her lover Vita Sackville-West, and set the closing scene on the very day the book was published.
Q 30Which film director, born in New York in July 1928, started out as a photographer for Look magazine?
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick sold his first photo series to Look in 1945, when he was still only sixteen years old.